- - Matt Lauer Accuser Brooke Nevils Details Alleged 2014 Rape: 'It Hurt to Walk. It Hurt to Sit. It Hurt to Remember'

Julia MooreJanuary 29, 2026 at 3:43 AM

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Brooke Nevils; Matt Lauer

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Warning: This story contains explicit language and graphic descriptions of sexual assault and misconduct.

Brooke Nevils filed a complaint against Matt Lauer at NBC in 2017 that led to his firing

Nevils alleged that Lauer had raped her in a hotel room during the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia

In a new essay for The Cut, Nevils, who is now married with two kids, revisited the harrowing experiences and shared how she has "painstakingly rebuilt" her life

Brooke Nevils, who accused Matt Lauer of rape, is sharing more about her story.

In an excerpt of her upcoming memoir published by The Cut on Jan. 28, Nevils recalled the details of her sexual encounters with the former Today show anchor, who was fired in 2017 after she reported his alleged assault that took place in 2014 during the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

Nevils' memoir, Unspeakable Things: Silence, Shame, and the Stories We Choose to Believe, is out Feb. 3 and explores the aftermath of her headline-making ordeal.

"I have spent the long years since using my otherwise abandoned skills as a journalist to report and write the book about sexual harassment and assault that I wish had existed for me," she wrote in the excerpt shared by The Cut.

PEOPLE has reached out to Lauer and NBC for comment.

The excerpt begins by revisiting the night that led to the alleged rape. She was at the bar with Today's co-anchor Meredith Vieira when Lauer, now 68, joined. She later went to his hotel room where she was "drunk and alone with Matt Lauer insisting on having anal sex," she wrote.

Nevils said she woke up the morning after the first assault to find her "underwear and the sheet beneath me caked with blood," and she said the pain was "undeniable." She wrote, "It hurt to walk. It hurt to sit. It hurt to remember."

In the essay, Nevils said that at the time, before she later would accuse him of rape, she "would never have used the word 'rape' to describe what had happened. Even now, I hear 'rape' and think of masked strangers in dark alleys. Back then, I had no idea what to call what happened other than weird and humiliating."

In 2019, Lauer denied raping Nevils in a lengthy letter to Variety.

She recounts Lauer ignoring her attempts to speak about what happened before they left Russia. On their final night in Sochi, Nevils said she "used my NBC burner phone to call Matt’s NBC burner phone," and he told her, "Come see me when we’re back in New York."

She said when they were back in the city, he "was sorry" he hadn't replied to her emails asking to talk, but he said, "if I wanted, I could come to his apartment that night. The look on his face was pleased, flattered, almost boyish. To him, apparently, those emails had been a proposition. Another opportunity. I was just relieved he wasn’t mad."

At his apartment, they had another sexual encounter, but beforehand, he "ducks out of the room and then returns, carrying an armful of towels."

She writes, "Just in case, he says generously, because of what happened last time. The implications of this radiate through me. “What happened last time” could only have been the blood. He saw it in Sochi. He has known about it all along. It was not a mistake. It was not a misunderstanding. And then afterward — after he’d seen the blood — he’d asked me if I liked it, and I’d been so broken and humiliated and desperate to please him that I’d said “yes.” But that was then. Why would he have towels now?"

Nevils recalled a repeated pattern of Lauer having sexual intercourse with her, and when she asked why he preferred anal sex during her first visit to his New York City apartment, he said, "I like it because it’s transgressive." She said there were "four more instances of alleged 'inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace,' as NBC News later characterized it," including "one encounter I even initiated...thinking that this would be the time I took back control. But I never did. I just implicated myself in my own abuse."

Matt Lauer in 2017

Noam Galai/WireImage)

She admitted that there's a "question I have been asked too many times to count, including by Matt himself," which is: "Why, if an alleged victim was really sexually assaulted, would they continue a relationship with the perpetrator? Why would they go back?"

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She explained that it was her "preexisting relationship" with Lauer — she had worked as a Page at NBC and later worked in the Today show green room — that made her "much less likely to immediately recognize it as an assault."

"I have to consider not only whether anyone will believe me but how the allegation will impact everyone else in my life. If that means losing a job, a church, a school, or part of my family, then that’s all the more reason to convince myself that it wasn’t a sexual assault in the first place," she wrote.

"The abuse is a known quantity that the victim has already survived, but the consequences of confronting or reporting the abuser are unknowable and therefore much more terrifying."

"Until I reported Matt, I probably told about 10 or 12 people sanitized, idealized versions of what happened, never suggesting that it had been anything other than my choice," Nevils continued. She said after telling friends their faces would go "pale." They advised her she "had to get out of" NBC.

"It would take years — and a national reckoning with sexual harassment and assault — before I called what happened to me assault," she wrote.

Matt Lauer

Nathan Congleton/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty

When she learned that "at least two teams of reporters from two different publications, Variety and the Times," were looking into Lauer, she said she knew it was a "matter of time" before her experiences came to light, and she "had no idea what to do."

"I was no Ashley Judd or Gretchen Carlson. I was just one woman and nobody’s ideal victim. I’d done everything wrong, and if it had taken five women coming forward with allegations against Mark Halperin, at least six for Bill O’Reilly, at least seven for Roger Ailes, how many women would have to come forward about Matt Lauer before any would be believed?" she remembered thinking.

She decided to file the complaint, believing it would remain confidential. Lauer was questioned the next day and fired by NBC News chairman Andrew Lack that night. "A slew of other allegations against Matt" were published by Variety and the Times the next day, and reporters began contacting Nevils personally.

She took a leave of absence from NBC, where she had been working as a prime-time news producer, which would "ultimately prove permanent."

"I barely recognized the train wreck I’d become," she said of the time after she reported the complaint. "I was compulsive, paranoid, and drinking all the time. I felt I’d ruined everything, hurt and embarrassed everyone I loved. Soon I would find myself in a psych ward, believing myself so worthless and damaged that the world would be better off without me."

After Nevils filed a complaint against Lauer and he was fired, several other women came forward with allegations against him. Lauer's wife of 19 years, Annette Roque — with whom he shares his three kids — filed for divorce.

He broke his silence on the allegations in a statement that was read by his former colleagues on air, in which he said, "Some of what is being said about me is untrue or mischaracterized, but there is enough truth in these stories to make me feel embarrassed and ashamed."

Nevils shared her experiences in Ronan Farrow‘s Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators in 2019, and Lauer told Variety in a statement that he had an "extramarital affair" with Nevils but maintained that everything was "completely consensual," denying her allegations of rape.

Today, Nevils says she has "painstakingly rebuilt" her life and is married with two kids. "Every moment with my family is a precious piece of the life that I once believed I no longer deserved to live," she wrote.

She ended her essay by speaking directly to others who are "trapped in the same impossible situation I once was. I know what it is to feel truly alone and ashamed, living a life that seems irredeemable, believing yourself to be worthless and unlovable. Not one of these things — for any one of us — is ever true.

If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, please contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go to rainn.org.

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